AmplifyChange Network grantee SEED Madagascar have partnered with the Ministry of Education in Madagascar to develop a comprehensive SRH curriculum across 24 high schools.

Within the country context the curriculum is important. Statistics show that over a third of Malagasy teenagers have begun childbearing (2016, MIS)*.

The new curriculum will be tested in a 3-month national pilot, starting in March/April. 12 foundational SRH topics will be integrated across 7 subjects chosen by the Ministry.

SEED have worked with the Ministry to provide recommendations based on evidence from their previous regional pilots. The partnership has also gathered perspectives on integrating SRH into current subjects by meeting with a range of stakeholders such as regional and local education authorities and teachers.

Teachers welcomed the initiative but stressed the importance of balancing the programme with the demands of conventional subjects.

The Ministry included around 60% of SEED’s recommendations in the new curriculum. More politically contested subjects, such as abortion and homosexuality, continue to be challenging to incorporate into the standard curriculum. SEED also hope the Ministry will adopt more interactive methods of delivering SRH education.

SEED's role within the pilot is to assist the Ministry with teacher training through outreach with partner organisations. Partners will also assist to monitor and evaluate the pilot as it spans across the country. They will be using a training of trainers approach to cascade knowledge down to selected teachers within the 24 schools. This model is also used by the Ministry for training teachers on the rest of the national curriculum.

SEED held a conference inviting potential stakeholders to apply to become monitoring partners for the pilot school locations. With complex infrastructure, limited access to the Wi-Fi, smart phones or laptops, collecting evidence and tracking the project will be a challenge.

With the integration of their local monitoring partners, and the development of a strong monitoring and evaluation framework, SEED will be working to mitigate these complex challenges to ensure quality across the 24 schools.

Approximately 7 partners will support the project by weekly tracking the delivery of classes in 15 schools over the duration of the pilot. This data will then be fed back to SEED to collect and report on. The remaining 9 schools will be monitored by the Ministry and SEED directly.

The project has significant potential to be used as the template for a national roll-out of an integrated comprehensive sexuality education curriculum led by the Ministry of Education.

Links and guidance

If you are looking for best practice on developing a CSE curriculum see the latest guidelines from UNESCO - available to download below.

*The DHS Program STATcompiler is a useful resource for country-specific SRHR statistics.